The Heirloom Read online

  We both stood up. ‘We’ll do everything we possibly can,’ Dr Gopher told us, and left the waiting-room.

  I reached over and stroked Sara’s cheek with my fingers.

  ‘Are you going now?’ she asked me.

  ‘I guess I’d better. What do you want me to bring you?’

  ‘Anything, so long as it’s clean. How about my green blouse and my white skirt with the sash? And clean panties, of course. And a toothbrush. My teeth feel like they’re growing fur.’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Anything to eat?’

  She shook her head. ‘There’ll be plenty of time to eat when Jonathan wakes up.’

  I kissed her, and went to the door. She said, ‘Ricky?’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘That – thing you saw last night. You warned it that you were going to have it exorcised.’

  ‘I was trying to challenge it, that was all. Exorcism was the first challenging thought that came into my head.’

  ‘You don’t think it might be worth your talking to Father Corso?’

  ‘Father Corso? You can just imagine what he’d say. “Mr Delatolla, modern theology has no place for physical manifestations of negative values. You’re probably externalising a psycho-religious conflict by superimposing the positive-negative interface on to an inanimate object, to wit, your chair.”’

  Sara couldn’t help smiling. Father Corso was very enthusiastic, and often very perceptive, but he was heavily into the sort of Catholicism that sounded good at Southern California cocktail parties. Bill, my assistant, called him ‘Saint Jacuzzi’.

  ‘You could try, though, couldn’t you?’ asked Sara. ‘Even if he can’t help us directly, he might have some relevant ideas.’

  I gave her a tired nod. ‘I’ll ask him. He’ll probably have me certified and locked up, but I’ll ask him. I won’t be away more than a couple of hours. Try calling me at the house if there’s any news of Jonathan.’

  ‘Okay, my darling. I love you.’

  I left the hospital and caught a cab back to Rancho Santa Fe. It was another one of those hot, hazy mornings, and by the time the cab drew up in my driveway, I felt like taking an ice-cold, ten-minute shower. I paid the driver and stiffly climbed out.

  Hortensia opened the door for me. ‘How’s Jonathan?’ she asked. ‘I’ve been worrying myself sick.’

  ‘He’s still unconscious, Hortensia, but the doctors say he’s getting better. They hope he’s going to wake up some time today.’

  ‘That was such a shock, Mr Delatolla. And all of those bad things happening…’

  I looked at her. ‘You know what’s been happening here?’

  ‘I see for myself, Mr Delatolla. That monster-thing what killed poor Sheraton. I see for myself, out of the window. And what happened to them pictures.’

  I frowned. ‘What pictures? What are you talking about?’

  Hortensia blew out her cheeks. ‘Uh-oh. You haven’t seen them pictures yet? I swear to you it’s black magic. Devil’s doing.’

  ‘Show me,’ I said.

  She waddled ahead of me along the corridor, twirling her feather-duster like a drum-majorette’s baton. She took me into the living-room, and then planted herself in front of my Copley painting of the mariner being rescued from the shark.

  ‘There,’ she said, dramatically. ‘You see if that isn’t devil’s doing.’

  I stared at the painting with mounting dread. The original composition had shown the mariner lying on his back in the sea, naked, while a boat-load of rescuers fought off a huge white-bellied shark. Now, the boat appeared to be further away from the mariner, and the faces of the rescuers had changed expression from grim determination to frustrated horror. The shark, with its mouth open wide to reveal rows of ferocious teeth, was closer to the mariner than before, and it was clear to anyone looking at the painting that it was going to reach him minutes before his friends could row near enough to beat it off.

  After two hundred years, it looked as if Copley’s mariner was at last going to be devoured by his grinning nemesis.

  Without waiting for Hortensia to lead the way, I crossed the living-room and looked at the Gilbert Stuart. The serious-faced colonial gentleman hadn’t altered; but in the thicket of woods which formed the background of the painting, a dark and barely distinguishable shape had appeared. It looked as if it was wearing a tall pointed hood, and I was uncomfortably reminded of the beast in the story The Casting of The Runes.

  ‘Well, Hortensia,’ I said. ‘I’m quite surprised you didn’t quit.’

  She clasped her hands together. ‘I don’t have papers, Mr Delatolla. Where could I go?’

  ‘But if you had papers?’

  She crossed herself. ‘God protects his children, Mr Delatolla.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘let’s hope so.’

  I went upstairs, while Hortensia went back to the kitchen. In our bedroom, I collected all the clean clothes we needed, and packed them into a zip-up TWA bag. Then I undressed, and went into the bathroom to take a shower. In the large mirror over the vanity basin, I appeared as a pale haggard stranger, with a day’s growth of beard and an angry zit on my left temple. I stepped into the yellow-tiled shower, closed the door, and turned on the water. For ten full minutes, I stood with my eyes shut, leaning against the side of the shower, letting the cool water splash all over me. I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed a shower as much in my life.

  When I walked back into the bedroom, however, towelling my hair dry and dabbing my face, I had the distinct feeling that a subtle change had occurred while I was in the shower. I looked around the room, but everything seemed to be just as it was. The airline bag on the bed, my crumpled clothes still lying on the floor. The top drawer in Sara’s bureau a couple of inches open, with the lacy edge of a pair of peach-coloured panties still showing. My car keys on top of the bedside table.

  I circled slowly around, drying myself more abstractedly, and trying to work out what it was that was so different. ‘Hortensia,’ I called out. ‘Did you touch anything in here?’ There was no reply. She was probably out in the yard. I sat down on the end of the bed, and I could see myself in Sara’s dressing-table mirror now, frowning and alone. I looked like a character in a German expressionist painting, probably entitled Fürchtbarkeit, fearfulness.

  I pulled on a clean pair of cotton jeans, and a blue chequered shirt. While I was buttoning up the cuffs, I went to the open door again and called, ‘Hortensia? You there?’

  There was still no answer. I shrugged, and went back to find myself a pair of socks.

  Quite suddenly, the telephone started ringing. It gave me a jolt for a second or two, because I wasn’t expecting anybody to call except Sara. I’d already told Bill to handle any queries down at the antiques store by himself. He might make one or two mistakes on pricing, or sell something that I’d been saving for a favoured customer, but there was no way that I was going to be able to cope with business problems until Jonathan came round.

  I picked up the phone and wedged it under my chin as I fastened my right cuff.

  ‘Delatolla.’

  ‘Mr Delatolla? This is Nurse Evans at the hospital. Your wife asked me to call you.’

  ‘Is everything okay? How’s Jonathan?’

  ‘His condition hasn’t changed. Your wife’s in with him now, trying to get him to respond to the sound of her voice.’

  ‘Well, you can tell her I’ll be right back.’

  ‘That’s what I was calling about, sir.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Your wife was anxious to know where you’d gone. She’s been calling you all day, but getting no reply.’

  ‘I haven’t gone anywhere. I’ve been at home for the past ten minutes, taking a shower and getting us a change of clothes. That’s all.’

  ‘All right, sir. I understand.’

  I was just about to put the phone down, when I suddenly realised what the nurse had said.

  ‘Just a minute –’ I asked her, ‘did you say “al
l day”?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘You said my wife’s been calling me all day.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Delatolla. She has.’

  ‘But it’s only ten in the morning.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘I said it’s only ten in the morning. How can my wife have been calling me all day when it’s still only ten in the morning?’ There was a long silence. Then, very cautiously, Nurse Evans said, ‘I’m sorry, sir. I think you must be making a mistake. It’s eight minutes of five in the afternoon.’

  I turned slowly around. My wristwatch was lying on the bed, only a couple of feet away. I reached over and picked it up and it read 4.49. Then I looked at the brass carriage clock on top of the bedroom bureau and I saw that it showed the same time.

  That was what had been so different when I had come out of the shower. Not the room itself, nor anything in it. It was the quality of light that had changed, and the direction of the shadows. Instead of being delineated by the sharp bright light of a California morning, the room was now suffused in hazy afternoon gold.

  Nurse Evans said, ‘Is that all, Mr Delatolla? Mr Delatolla?’

  ‘Yes,’ I told her, quietly. ‘Just be kind enough to tell my wife that I’ll be back at the hospital within a half-hour.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  I laid down the phone. I felt swimmy and detached, as if I were suffering from jet-lag. Somehow, a whole day had passed me by while I was taking a shower. The clock had jumped by trickery, and another seven or eight hours of my life had vanished beyond recall. I went to the dressing-table and stared at myself in silence. The influence of the chair was stealing my life away, and I didn’t even know how, or why.

  No wonder Hortensia hadn’t answered when I called. She must have gone home some hours before.

  I picked up the phone and called Bill at the antiques store.

  ‘Bill? It’s Ricky.’

  ‘Oh, hi, Ricky. Will you excuse me one moment? That’s right, sir, it’s genuine Georgian silver. That’s right, George III. Or maybe George IV. Well, I know, but they were related, weren’t they? So I guess their spoons must have had a lot in common, too.’

  I rubbed my eyes. Usually, Bill’s attempts to show off his knowledge of antiques really amused me. He once told a customer that the cushioned cresting-rail of a prie-dieu chair must have been put there for kibitzers to lean on while the chair’s occupant was playing cards. But today, I wasn’t in the mood for anything light-hearted. My son was lying in a coma, and I’d just been robbed of a whole morning and afternoon of my life.

  ‘I’ve been trying to get you,’ said Bill, after his customer had left. ‘I know you told me not to call, but Sara rang up a couple of times and asked me if you were round here at the store; and then Mr Sears came in, and wanted to speak to you urgently.’

  ‘Mr Sears? Did he say what he had on his mind?’

  ‘It was something to do with the chair, he told me. But he didn’t say which chair.’

  I raked my fingers through my wet hair. ‘That’s okay, Bill. I know which chair. Maybe I’ll be able to call at Presidio Place. Are there any other messages?’

  ‘Mrs Greenbaum came in about the dumb waiter.’

  ‘Did she nibble?’

  ‘She’s still interested, but I think we’re going to have to come down a couple of hundred.’

  ‘I already came down three.’

  ‘Well, I told her I’d talk to you, and see what we could do.’

  ‘Bill,’ I replied, ‘you have such a way with eighty-year-old ladies. You missed your vocation. You should have run a retirement home.’

  ‘Are you going back to the hospital now?’ asked Bill.

  ‘As soon as I’ve locked up the house.’

  ‘There’s, uh… there’s nothing wrong is there?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Between you and Sara. I mean, I don’t like to stick my nose in where it isn’t wanted, but she was real worried about you today. It’s not like you to take off and not tell her where you’re going. She was real worried.’

  I stood up. ‘Bill,’ I said, ‘I appreciate your interest. But everything’s fine between Sara and me. We’re just experiencing a few domestic problems, that’s all. No marriage break-up, no traumas. Just a few problems.’

  ‘Okay, I’m glad to hear it. Can I expect you around the store tomorrow?’

  ‘Maybe for five minutes. It depends how Jonathan’s responding.’

  ‘I’ll say a prayer for him, you know?’

  ‘Thanks, Bill.’

  I put down the phone. I hesitated for a moment, and then I took the San Diego telephone book out of the bedside table and riffled through it until I found the number for Presidio Place. I pecked out the number with the end of my ballpen and waited while it rang.

  ‘Presidio Place.’

  ‘Hi. I’m trying to contact Mr David Sears. He’s staying with someone at the Place. I’m afraid I don’t know whom.’

  ‘Hold on. I think he’s with Mr Eads. Yes, that’s right, Mr Eads. You want me to try the number?’

  The switchboard girl rang and rang and rang but there was no reply. In the end, I said, ‘Thanks all the same, but forget it,’ and hung up. I stood for a while in the shadows of our late-afternoon bedroom, and wondered what the hell had happened to David. We hadn’t parted yesterday on particularly friendly terms, but I didn’t like to think that he’d been hurt. Even worse, I didn’t like to think that the chair had somehow escaped him.

  I took the airline bag and went downstairs. In the living-room, my paintings hadn’t changed any further – not that I could distinguish, anyway. Maybe the hooded figure in the background of the Gilbert Stuart portrait was a fraction clearer, a fraction more prominent. But that was probably nothing more than my imagination.

  On the way out, I stopped by the library door. It was ajar, only about an inch, but enough for me to be able to see the side of my desk and the sunlight falling across the rows of books. I pushed it open wider, and it creaked introspectively on its hinges, like an old man disturbed in a dream.

  The library, apart from its regular furniture, was empty. No chair. No surprises. I found myself letting out a puff of relief.

  I went outside, locked the screen door behind me, and crossed the driveway to my wagon. High up above me, the sky was already beginning to fade to the colour of blue flag flowers.

  *

  They showed me through to the room where Jonathan was lying, and I stood at the end of his bed looking at his bandaged face and his one visible eye, and I thought to myself, why, God? Why did it have to be him? I did all the damage, and yet I escaped unscathed. Why is it always the innocent people who get hurt the most?

  Sara was sitting at the bedside looking white-faced and utterly exhausted. She cupped her chin in her hands and stared up at me as if she’d heard that I’d been caught in flagrante delicto with another woman.

  ‘Where have you been?’ she asked me, making no attempt to conceal the acid in her voice.

  ‘I went home for some clean clothes,’ I told her. ‘I showered, and then I came out of the shower, and—’

  ‘Ricky, I’ve been waiting for you all day! I’ve been going out of my mind with worry! I’ve called you again and again, and nobody knew where you were! I’ve been sitting here all on my own trying to coax Jonathan out of his coma, without any word, without any support, while you’ve been – well, God knows where you’ve been. I don’t really want to know.’

  ‘Sara, listen,’ I replied. ‘As far as I’m concerned, I’ve only been away for two hours. You remember what happened on Sunday night – how the night simply disappeared? Well, that’s what happened today.’

  ‘How could it have done?’

  ‘What do you mean, how could it have done? How the hell do I know? I don’t know where Sunday night went and I don’t know where today went. But it went. I spent ten minutes in the shower and when I came out, it was afternoon.’

  She slowly lowered her ha
nds and sat up straight. ‘You’re not fooling me?’ she asked. ‘The day actually disappeared?’

  I nodded, with exaggerated emphasis. ‘The day actually disappeared. One minute it was morning, the next it was late afternoon. I don’t know how it happened, but it did. What do you really suppose I was doing for seven hours? Playing around with some woman while Jonathan’s lying in hospital?’

  She reached out her hand for me across the red hospital blanket. ‘I’m sorry. I was frightened for you, that’s all. I didn’t mean to sound bitchy.’

  ‘I don’t blame you, Sara, for Christ’s sake.’

  I came around the bed and kissed her. Then we both looked at Jonathan, who was lying on his pillow so still and white that he could have been dead. Only the tell-tale heartbeat which pulsed across the screen of the electro-cardiograph equipment told us that our son was still alive. A steady beep-beep-beep to record the tenuous survival of that life which I had first heard when I pressed my ear to Sara’s stomach, six years and six months ago.

  We had lost one child already. I prayed to Our Lady that we wouldn’t lose Jonathan, too. He was too precious, too important. He was everything good that Sara and I had brought to our marriage, the best of both of us, and most of all, he was himself.

  ‘The nurse told me you’d been talking to him,’ I said.

  Sara said, ‘Yes. Most of the day.’

  ‘And no response?’

  She shook her head. ‘I even tried singing, but it didn’t do any good.’

  ‘You think a song might get through to him?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It’s been successful before… or so Dr Gopher told me. Sometimes coma patients start to come around when they hear one of their favourite records.’

  I leaned over Jonathan’s bed, and stared at his face for a long time. My son, where are you now? What are you dreaming, behind that single closed eye? I was so near that I could almost have kissed him, but he was so far away from me that I couldn’t tell if he was ever going to be able to come back.

  I cleared my throat, and sang:

  ‘Johnny shall have a new bonnet,

  Johnny shall go to the fair,